Vanuatu: Molten Lava Fireworks, Mt. Yasur Volcano

“Doesn’t
look like they let you get that close to the caldera,” Wayne commented, upon
seeing the first of my Mt. Yasur volcano images.“You’ll see,” I told him.with great certainty.“That would be bad.Very,
very bad.And fatal….”

Having
narrowly missed the volcanic caldera view of Ambrym’s Mt. Marum, even though Wayne was chomping at
the bit to leave Vanuatu and move on to New Caledonia, he wanted to honormy insistence on seeing Mt.Yasur. “I’ll wait for you
in Port Vila,” he promised, noting seeing Yasur was not that important to
him. Even if the sail to Tanna
from Vila wasn’t an unpleasant upwind bash, it meant we were missing that same
rarified weather window required for a nice passage to New Caledonia.

Then a magnificent sandy pyramid
arose from the ash plain.
Tanna, Vanuatu.

What
makes Tanna’s Mt. Yasur so unique?

Mt.
Yasur spews molten lava almost as reliably as Yellowstone’s Old Faithful geysers. And, like at
Yellowstone, you’re able to get close enough to see, feel, hear and even smell it
erupt, without too great a risk of life and limb. In fact, sometimes areas are closed off because its
eruptions are too boisterous.

Oh! If only the last bit into Ambrym’s volcanicMt. Marum had
been this easy! Mt. Yasur,
Vanuatu.

“Yasur
was a little too Disneyland-ish,” Mark Silvestein of Field Trip
complained.

Indeed,
part of what made the hike to Mt. Marum awesome was the fabulous scenery
leading up to it… stunning rugged mountainous and coastline vistas, dramatic
charcoal-colored lava plains, punctuated by brilliant green jungle growth.And always, there is the startling
sharp, vertical thrust of the lava cone itself, a sure signal of a violently
fiery emergence from the center of the earth.Personally, it’s a sight that unfailingly makes me gasp in
awe of nature’s power.

While
less dramatic in color, Mt. Yasur’s tawny ash is more akin to New Zealand’s shapely sand dunesoff its famed “90 mile drive.”
I suspect the passage to Mt. Yassur’s lovely prelude to its cone has
been almost entirely usurped by 4-wheel drive tours. As we whizzed past Yasur’s gorgeous plains, I pined for the
leisurely exploration afforded by Mt. Marum’s mostly excellent hiking
trails. Then again, we were also
racing to reach Mt. Yassur by sunset, and we were running quite late.

Our
lateness spared us the literal kustom song-and-dance show at the Mt. Yasur
visitor center, though they were still quick to collect their entire $75/person
entry fee.Apparently just a few
months before, the entry fee was only half that.

Just
across the road from Mt. Yasur’s visitor center is Yasur View Bungalows,
where I’d originally planned to camp.Again, while the bungalows were a mere 3 clicks (kilometers, or 2 miles)
from Mt. Yasur’s ridge point, the dirt road there was a veritable dust cloud
from the 4 wheel drive’s passage in.Was there a dust-free walking path to Mt. Yasur’s ridge point?If not, I too would’ve succumbed to a
4-wheel drive in even from nearby Yasur View Bungalows.

Ahhh, my first acrid but stunning
taste of what all the Mt. Yasur fuss is about.

In
fact, much as I ached to explore that whole volcanic plain as much or more than
the explosive volcano itself, I have never, ever been anyplace dustier than
Tanna.Considering how many
countries I’ve been – that’s saying a lot!It’s not just the volcanic ash, it’s the fine soil of the
road; with few exceptions, all the Tanna roads I traveled were unpaved.

None
of these minor complaints supersede Yasur’s genuinely spectacular draw…. It’s
little more than a few minutes walk up from the parking lot along a
well-defined path and – wow! -- you’re overlooking an obviously active caldera.

Hellfire
and brimstone – forget that namby-pamby revivalist stuff – this is the real
deal!

Did I mention acrid? So I followed these guys (and gals),
Mt. Yasur volcano, Vanuatu.

You
find yourself noticing a file of hikers on another part of the caldera’s
ridge.Hmmm, they seem to be upwind,
and seems their view is as good or better.

Dusk
ushers in darkness.Quickly, I
follow in the ridge-walker’s footsteps.The ridge is a little loose, but wide and well marked, even in the
semi-darkness.Ahhh… I’m upwind of
the grit, sulfer and smoke.

“BOOM!
BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!”

I
stop.It’s either that, or run
like hell!I look.The primordial drumbeat resumes.

Sometimes,
that BOOM! merely precedes a puff of red-tinged smoke, like a wily magician,
deftly transitioning between acts.

Other
times the explosions are followed by a gigantic yellow-white towering fountain
of flame, casting red-orange sparks in its wake.No longer able to defy the laws of gravity, the sparks then streak
their streaming way earthward.

This is a recent retrospective of when I went to Tanna Sunday, September 13, returning Wednesday the16, 2016. Wayne and Journey remained at "our" Yachting World mooring (S17.44.750 E168.18.729) in Vanuatu’s Port Vila. We're currently in New Caledonia, where we arrived September 21, 2016; this post was written while at anchor Noumea, New Caledonia (S22.16.695 E166.25.688). We're currently cruising the country. There’s still a few more Vanuatu posts to catch up on.

While this post is about our last country, Vanuatu, we're currently in New Caledonia. This Google Earth.map shows both.

Cruising by the Numbers

Our September 2016 sail from Vanuatu to New Caledonia was 305 miles.

Our August 2016 sail from Fiji to Vanuatu was 525 miles.

We cruised just under 440 miles in Fiji, between late May and early August.

Our May 2016 sail from New Zealand to Fiji was 1090 miles.

December 2015 - May 2016 if we weren't cruising New Zealand or hunkering, we were making massive road trips from New Zealand's tip to its tail.

From December 2014 - November 2015 we sailed from Northern Florida's Atlantic side to New Zealand, over 10,000 miles, with more than a few stops in between.

Prior to that we sailed from St. Lucia to Florida and also spent a season cruising the Bahamas.

Then a magnificent sandy pyramid
arose from the ash plain.
Tanna, Vanuatu.

Up NextWe're planning on cruising in New Caledonia until November. After New Caledonia, we head to Australia, by December 2016 (but probably earlier). There, we plan to sell our boat, and go back to work, somewhere.